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A Fountain Garden to Behold

April 4th, 2017

Longwood Gardens is getting close to reopening its 5-acre flagship Main Fountain Garden, the one with the huge dancing, lighted plumes that’s been closed for a $90 million re-do the past 2 years.

Longwood’s Main Fountain Garden is back into place and looking like this as it heads down the home stretch to the May 27 reopening.

Prepare to be amazed… as if you’re not already by everything Longwood does.

Come May 27, the new Main Fountain Garden will go where no Fountain Garden has gone before.

The cutting-edge 3D software and state-of-the-art water-moving equipment will shoot water 175 feet in the air (35 feet higher than before), create jets that spin and twirl in a massive lighted water ballet set to music, and even produce flames that erupt on top of the water plumes.

“This is something you won’t be able to see any other place in the world,” Longwood Gardens CEO Paul Redman said at a press preview of the project last week.

I got to see the guts of this new technology during the preview, and what’s underneath and behind the scenes answers the question about why the project took 2 years and $90 million to do.

Some of the underground pumps that will make Longwood’s fountain show work.

There’s a whole water factory the size of two football fields buried under the fountains. Pumps and pipes and ductwork snake throughout 1,400 feet of tunnels.

The scope and power of this engineering crossword puzzle can move 700,000 gallons of water for a show and create a limitless array of light colors and water movements.

This is all in addition to 4,000 pieces of carved limestone stonework and columns that were moved, cleaned and restored – one by one – at an off-site masonry facility, and a new grotto that will feature an overhead eye (an oculus) that drops a circular curtain of water into a basin below.

The brain of the renovated garden is a computer work station where “fountain choreographers” can design shows on a screen, watch it in virtual action, then transfer a finished idea to the 1,719 water jets that make it happen in real life.

Some movements have never been used anywhere else, such as the “basketweave” pattern that shoots narrow jets at criss-crossing angles to create what looks like a woven basket of water.

This is the basketweave pattern that’s new at Longwood.Credit: Longwood Gardens

The fountain designer, Jim Garland of California-based Fluidity Design Consultants, said in a Longwood video interview that the possibilities are impressive enough to “make people cry.”

You’ll get your chance to cry starting May 27 when Longwood unveils a summer-long show series called “Summer of Spectacle.” Fountain shows set to music will happen daily at 11 a.m. and 1, 3 and 5 p.m. Half-hour evening shows with lights and music are planned Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 7 and 9:15 p.m. from May 27 through Sept. 30.

Go online to get your tickets in advance (especially for the evening shows) because Longwood is expecting sellouts and is using a timed-ticket system.

Tickets are $23 for adults, $20 for ages 62 and up, and $12 for students. Timed tickets for May 27 and after go on sale April 3 through Longwood’s website. Longwood is located at 1001 Longwood Road, Kennett Square, in Chester County about an hour and 45 minutes southeast of Harrisburg.

I wrote an article last week for PennLive about the new fountain garden and what led to it, and colleague Julia Hatmaker put together a video and photo gallery from the press preview day. Read and see those on the PennLive gardening pages.